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Let's face it, we can be a nasty, brutal race.
And at other times we can show incredible passion.
Auschwitz (and others) hopefully reminds us that being good is heaps better than being bad.
Well, I sincerely hope that's the case.
I think the scale and the brutal, unfeeling efficiency of the holocaust is simply too much for some people to fathom: 6.5 million people murdered is just too big a thing to get your head around, and requires quite a bit of emotional maturity (if that's the right phrase).
If I'd have gone to Auschwitz when I was anything but an adult - I don't think I would have grasped the full horror either, and I'm not willing to criticize anyone, particularly youngsters, that can't.
For me, that image of a survivor getting vaccinated is extremely powerful - as it illustrates just how recent this was: this happened to peoples parents, and grandparents who are alive today to tell their stories, this isn't ancient history.
If this is a man by Primo Levi – quite short but it describes in great detail what life was like there and the liberation.
If This is a Man is quite simply one of the best and most important books ever written.
We need more memorials to remind us just how fragile our civilisation is and how such atrocities can crop up at any time. Since WW2 and the genocide perpetrated by the Nazi's other atrocities have occurred that significantly surpassed the scale of what the Nazi's did. The Soviets were responsible for at least 20 million deaths and Chairman Mao around 50 million (both most likely under estimates), but there are no memorials you can visit for those periods of time to remind us and not even a formal recognition or apologies from those regimes.
As we're now losing people who lived through these times to tell the tale first hand I think it will become harder for the impact of these atrocities to sink in for future generations so memorials are important to ensure we learn the lessons of the past. And such atrocities such as these are not taught at school like the doctrine of the Nazi's and Jewish concentration camps are. I remember being taught about the murder of the Romanovs, but nothing around the murder and genocide and docterines of the Soviet or the Chinese regimes.
So very true Wobbliscott, and who remembers the 10 to 14 million or so killed by Japanese war crimes in WW2, considerably more than the holocaust............
See https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/9196-sterling-and-peggy-seagrave-gold-warriors/
I went in 98, very sobering.
The two things that stayed with me were
The most disturbing things I saw in Auschwitz are the pile of glasses, shoes, hair (cut from women’s heads), suitcases etc.
and the feeling of walking through one of the gas chambers, never had that feeling before or since - I didn't want to stay in there any long than I had to.
We were in Krakow for a week for a music festival a few years ago and what I found disturbing was that Auschwitz *was* advertised like just another tourist attraction... Tour to see the salt mine, so many zloty, tour to see Auschwitz, so many zloty, listed exactly the same. And if you went to the back of the souvenir shops they sold little figurines of Jewish men with hats and ringlets.
They made a lot of the Jewish heritage of some parts of the city but were pretty quiet about how come there weren't any Jewish people there now...
But TBH it was much the same in southern Spain, quite happy to flog you a gazillion moorish-tile fridge magnet with one hand while giving Muslim tourists grief and hassle in the cathedral (ex mosque) in Cordoba.
People eh :/
I went to Auschwitz in 1990. a couple of weeks later I met up with a group of americans. Upon telling them about the visit they said " bet you got loads of great pictures" I told them I didn't take a single one as it was disrespectful. They could not understand
TBH i don’t mind the selfie takers and smirking teenagers, it’s as good a reminder as any that we live in a liberal democracy and not a totalitarian state. Plus you just know it would’ve driven them (the Nazis) bonkers, so more power to them.
I went to Auschwitz in 1990. a couple of weeks later I met up with a group of americans. Upon telling them about the visit they said ” bet you got loads of great pictures” I told them I didn’t take a single one as it was disrespectful. They could not understand
yet another tj dig at americans.
vinneyeh
I spent 3 weeks with this group touring the USSR on motorcycles. they split into two groups- those that were respectful and those that were not. the disrespectful one caused loads of trouble. the entitlement in them was really abhorrent.
I could tell many tales like refusing to take their baseball caps off in churches, like attempting to take banned things thru the USSR border that delayed the whole party at the boarder for hours. like taking photos where they were banned etc etc.
I was sent this link yesterday by a work mate.
I spent 3 weeks with this group touring the USSR on motorcycles. they split into two groups- those that were respectful and those that were not. the disrespectful one caused loads of trouble. the entitlement in them was really abhorrent.
see, I'm not sure why you bothered to mention their nationality. It's of no relevance.
not going to derail this any further.
They made a lot of the Jewish heritage of some parts of the city but were pretty quiet about how come there weren’t any Jewish people there now…
forgot to mention this. I went with a school trip (to help out) and our tour guide was an old Polish Roma grandma, who it has to be said, didn’t miss an opportunity to emphasis the numbers of Roma going through the camp and how they didn’t “deserve” to be treated like that. She wasn’t overtly anti Semitic, but one could tell it was only just under the surface. I wasn’t the only adult in the group to start to feel a little uncomfortable after a while.
TBH i don’t mind the selfie takers and smirking teenagers, it’s as good a reminder as any that we live in a liberal democracy and not a totalitarian state. Plus you just know it would’ve driven them (the Nazis) bonkers, so more power to them.
It's easy to react with disgust about the lack of respect but I'm with you. Much as we laud the heroics of fallen soldiers, who didn't ask to be heroes. They'd much rather sat in the pub telling dick jokes and disrespecting their elders than have the opportunity to be a hero. We lionise those in the past but in reality they were just as frail, mixed, brave, frightened and well, ordinary as us.
Let them take the selfies and hope one day, when they're older, as the wisdom of age hopefully comes, that the penny drops about why they are free to do so. I'd rather that than them on a chatroom being fed bullshit by some bitter vile troll.
TBH i don’t mind the selfie takers and smirking teenagers, it’s as good a reminder as any that we live in a liberal democracy and not a totalitarian state.
I'd rather they went there and took selfies than never visited. Everyone who has been is innoculated (to some extent) against holocaust denial etc.
Plus no one can imagine the true horror of the place, it's just not possible (without sinking into a great depression). Everyone processes it differently.
Never been but this is interesting about a new gallery at the IWM :
The galleries would challenge the “ongoing, persistent determination to think of the perpetrators as brainwashed, hyper-radicalised people”.
“That’s not how it really was. Holocaust museums for years have been asking visitors: ‘Beware the Holocaust because you could have been a victim.’ I suppose we are thinking: ‘Beware the Holocaust because you could have been a perpetrator.’”
I feel like places like Auschwitz are important but it's easy to 'other' the germans at the time. Our national myth that we are the good guys who beat the evil Nazis and saved the Jews totally ignores all the unforgivable things our country/countrymen have done in the name of Empire etc which are similarly awful.
For instance how many people know that the British invented concentration camps? Or about some of the massacres/genocidal actions we systematically undertook as part of empire building etc? I don't think it's whataboutery to point out we have a hugely blinkered view.
i thought the guide at Auschwitz was excellent and made it feel more than a tourist attraction, Mrs demilles relatives managed to escape Germany in 1938 so it was very real for her, the deal involved passports for her great grandparents if the son enlisted in Latvian Army, they still don't know what became of him.
In Phnom Penh, the tuk-tuk drivers will offer a discount to the Killing Fields and a local gun range where you can fire an AK-47, i can never imagine wanting to do one after doing the other!
I think the scale and the brutal, unfeeling efficiency of the holocaust is simply too much for some people to fathom: 6.5 million people murdered
Despite, or maybe because of, an annual Holocaust Day and regular reminders about the terrible things that happened, most people can't even get the number of deaths correct. There were 6.5m Jews murdered. There were more than 7m 'others' murdered, who are barely ever mentioned.
our tour guide was an old Polish Roma grandma, who it has to be said, didn’t miss an opportunity to emphasis the numbers of Roma going through the camp and how they didn’t “deserve” to be treated like that. She wasn’t overtly anti Semitic, but one could tell it was only just under the surface.
Maybe because of the above?
There were more than 7m ‘others’ murdered, who are barely ever mentioned.
I've been involved in a couple of local HMD events and the non-jewish victims were definitely mentioned. It is startling to discover that probably more non-jewish (mostly soviet civilians and prisoners of war) were killed than jewish people.
If I’d have gone to Auschwitz when I was anything but an adult – I don’t think I would have grasped the full horror either, and I’m not willing to criticize anyone, particularly youngsters, that can’t.
I had the opportunity to go on a school trip there when I was 14 but didn't as the cost was rather a lot for a 3 day trip plus being stuck on a coach for a long time each side too. I'm glad I didn't as some of the group were very disrespectful to the place going by the photos that emerged a few weeks later (it was 1995 so everyone had cheap film cameras). One of my friends did go and she revisited it again in 2016, she said it was a much more humbling experience the second time. I do want to visit there myself at some point, respectfully, as it's one of those things that needs to be shared via first-hand viewing. I know there have been larger scale genocides since but the ones in WWII are what is taught at school and is close to 'home' so more likely to resonate with us here in Europe. My fear is the atrocity will become disconnected from reality the further in the past it goes with people thinking it can never happen again, that will be dangerous. If the lessons of Auschwitz and other atrocities are forgotten then they are more likely to happen again or worse.
The most disturbing things I saw in Auschwitz are the pile of glasses, shoes, hair (cut from women’s heads), suitcases etc. All piled up and sorted in their 1000s to be re-used in Germany supplying the troops etc. Anything of value (gold fillings, false teeth etc) was removed before the bodies went in the furnaces. They specifically request you don’t photograph any of these when you’re there.
The tin of Nivea face cream absolutely finished me off. Almost the same as a tin you could go and buy today.
The Schindler museum was incredibly affecting too.
I think everyone should go to these places. And the Tyne Cot cemetary as well.
Peace and love people, peace and love....
Auschwwitz certainly cemented my anti war and pacifist view of the world.
I don’t think it’s whataboutery to point out we have a hugely blinkered view.
Yes, having a just read Chomsky's Who Rules the World, the chapter on the North American genocide and ethnic cleansing of native peoples is staggering. Far bigger scale and far more "effective" than the Jewish Holocaust.
If the lessons of Auschwitz and other atrocities are forgotten then they are more likely to happen again or worse.
True, although, unfortunately, it is currently happening. China has imprisoned over 1 million Uighur people in "indoctrination camps" where they are educated not to the follow their beliefs. The same is also happening in Myanmar with the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslims.
Sure, lots of people say strongly worded things about the above, but no-one is doing anything of substance to stop it. America threw it's toys out of the pram about Chinese steel and, through economic disincentives, took tangible action. They are are passive beyond sternly worded letters about their concentration camps.
Genocide is generally allowed by the world political community. It's only outrageous enough to actually intervene if those countries also have some of our oil, or natural resources, under their land or they are economically important.
My point is that we should keep Auschwwitz as a warning for the future.
Holocausts are going on right now though so we also need to act on this warning.
A scouting friend I have known over 50yrs was at Belsen on day 1 of its liberation (he was a medic). It was only when he was in his late 80s did he tell me what he had seen. Never spoken of it before.
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Standing at the grave of his school friend killed on D-Day
My son (20) and his girlfriend (19) were given the choice of accompanying us on the tour. To my surprise they both appeared keen to go, although I do wonder how much of that was because they recognised my desire that they should see it. The journey back to Krakow was markedly different to the journey to Auschwitz. I'd never seen my son like that before and the only other time he's been so subdued was at my dad's funeral.
I went a few years ago. I was moved as much as I expected to be. Watched the recording of the documentary of the liberation the other night. I still recall watching it as a teenager and being sick afterwards.
In the meantime. This is a photo of wall of the inside of the synagogue memorial in Prague. Just a small section. Of one place. Humans can't really comprehend numbers.
My fear is the atrocity will become disconnected from reality the further in the past it goes
it is enviable. In time there will be a book written that will say (paraphrasing) “Were the Nazis really that bad?” I think you’d have to give it a couple of hundred years maybe, but it will be written, as distasteful that idea is to us now.
You can buy books of (for instance) the Taiping rebellion in which historians discuss the deaths of 20, perhaps as many as 30 million people in the 1860s Or the roughly 40 million caused by Ghengis Khan.
it’s just a matter of time.
One of the problems is it is hard to comprehend such numbers - as Stalin (I think) said ‘one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic’...
Coming from somebody who killed millions himself it’s quite a chilling line of thought.
Auschwwitz certainly cemented my anti war and pacifist view of the world.
I get where you're coming from, but the reality is that it was war that put an end to the Holocaust (and yes, I know the causes of WW2 were far more complex). Sometime going to war can be the lesser of two terrible things.
Until, as a species, we find a way round that we are going to armies etc for quite a while. Short of a world government it's hard to see the solution (other than in idealistic utopian terms).
Like a death theme park.
Don't ever go to a museum...you'll lose your mind.
Despite living in Munich I've not once been inclined to visit Dachau. Imagining the sadness is enough for me. Not sure I need to see it up close.
A few years ago, up the top of a mountain, I met an old lady and old Bavarian guy. They started telling me stories of "back then". In school a common threat from the teachers was if you didn't behave you too would be sent to Dachau.
Was touring around northern Germany a few years ago. Driving along we noticed signs about mass graves. Turns out these were mad graves for victims of communism. Drive a little further into a village and see signs for Sachsenhausen KZ. The camp is directly behind the main street of the town!
In fact, it's interesting to see how many sub camps existed all over the place. Essentially worker camps for nearby factories, mines, etc.
There's a thing here in Munich of placing gold or bronze cobble stones in front of houses and businesses that belonged to Jewish families who were chased out and deported. There a several just around the corner from my place. Cleverly (or out of fear that every other building would have a stone outside it) the city council decided that these stones could only be placed on private land, not public, as many of the pavements are. As such there are more stones in storage than there are in the pavements. 117 stones have been set into the pavement so far.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Stolpersteine_in_M%C3%BCnchen?wprov=sfla1
Re. companies profiting from the war. The other day a few large German companies laid wreaths, acknowledging their part in the holocaust. Deutsche Bahn (train people), Deutsche Bank, Daimler, Volkswagen and (strangely) the football club Borussia Dortmund.
That leaves out the plethora of other companies of household names that benefited from cheap slave labour. Nestlé, Maggi, Hugo Boss (worked on his family house years ago), BMW... The list is long.
Then there are the non-German companies who carried on working /operating in Nazi Germany. Coco Channel, Kodak, IBM, GM and Ford, Coca Cola... Fanta, anyone?
A scouting friend I have known over 50yrs was at Belsen on day 1 of its liberation (he was a medic). It was only when he was in his late 80s did he tell me what he had seen. Never spoken of it before.
Wonder if he knew my grandad, he never spoke about the war to me, hardly ever said anything to anyone.
I get where you’re coming from, but the reality is that it was war that put an end to the Holocaust (and yes, I know the causes of WW2 were far more complex). Sometime going to war can be the lesser of two terrible things.
Odd thing to say! The war had nothing to do with death camps, or Nazi genocide. The fact that is stopped them is entirely coincidental.
The war had nothing to do with death camps, or Nazi genocide.
Yep, hadn't started when the war started, although anti semitism was rife in Germany, they just hadn't got to the stage of genocide. Worth noting that the anti-semitism wasn't that unpopular over here, scores of landed gentry, peers, business people, newspaper barons etc were fawning over Hitler. Lord Reeth (first DG of the BBC) offered to fly the Swastika over the BBC if Goring came for a visit!
If you want the full details of just how popular Hitler was in the UK pre WW2, I can recommend:
Odd thing to say! The war had nothing to do with death camps, or Nazi genocide. The fact that is stopped them is entirely coincidental.
Not odd at all. I said the causes of WW2 were quite complex and of course the genocide hadn't really started by 1939. However it was military action that put an end to the atrocities.
The point I was making was in relation to the comment about pacifism and the fact that while being a pacifist is generally speaking a fine thing to be, there are circumstances where, sadly, use of military force is necessary. We don't live in an ideal world.
What is odd about that, do tell?
there are circumstances where, sadly, use of military force is necessary. We don’t live in an ideal world.
Indeed. I am a lifelong pacifist but i recognise this. the concept of a just war or a just action in a war and that of a war crime. Now the victors write the history so you need a bit of salt with it but for example the DDay landings cost a huge amount of lives. Was that justified? On balance I would say yes. The Bombing of Dresden? War crime
but for example the DDay landings cost a huge amount of lives. Was that justified? On balance I would say yes.
Getting slightly off topic maybe but the "on balance" phrase intrigues me, suggesting a degree of doubt. What were the alternatives to D-Day that would still have won the war (there by stopping the Holocaust) that would maybe have involved fewer lives being lost?
I know this is all a bit hypothetical, but am curious.
Maybe just a poor choice of words but meaning - balancing all the factors it was justified. greatest good of greatest number
What were the alternatives to D-Day that would still have won the war (there by stopping the Holocaust) that would maybe have involved fewer lives being lost?
Pretty much the best alternative to D Day, the best way of not sacrificing those lives would have been not have got involved in the pointless Great War, not played along with petty imperial power politics, not allowed WW2 to start at all*. But, it did start, and cost 70 million lives..
And, once again, D Day didn't have anything at all to do with stopping the Holocaust. ;D
* and that's where the pacifism bit comes in, not once you've started enlisting every person n the country to the war effort.
Pretty much the best alternative to D Day, the best way of not sacrificing those lives would have been not have got involved in the pointless Great War, not played along with petty imperial power politics, not allowed WW2 to start at all*. But, it did start, and cost 70 million lives..
In that case how far back do you go? Should Britain have intervened in 1870 and crushed Prussia? Would that have prevented WW! or would it have led to something else even worse? Or say we hadn't got involved in WW!, Germany may well have crushed France and Russia, leading to them becoming a dominant power in Europe and allowing them to carry out an even greater Holocaust. We can never know. Far too many variables and to say "Well we should never have got involved is far too simplistic".
My question was basically In, say, 1943, were there any alternatives to the D-Day landings? I suspect not but my knowledge of history isn't brilliant so am curious.
Wonder if he knew my grandad
It's possible since they were both at Belsen about the same time. He went a across on D-Day & was with the troops battling for Caen. Worked his way through France, Belgium (mentioned in dispatches here) and then into Germany.
If you've any old photos of your grandad's medical unit this is Sergeant Bert Thornton
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I only mentioned my father (Royal Navy) was in the Battle of the Atlantic 1940/1943 and it got him talking. Apparently, Bert was based in Iceland which is where the navy took many shipwrecked survivors. From that small opener he began to tell me his story.
In that case how far back do you go? Should Britain have intervened in 1870 and crushed Prussia?
Exactly. (I was thinking exactly the same about 1870!) It's impossible, of course. But my point is, it makes no difference what the alternatives were to the Normandy landings. By that stage everyone was in too deep for anything to make a difference - it would all cost lives.
and allowing them to carry out an even greater Holocaust.
On this point - does anybody know how many potential Holocaust victims were saved by the ending of the war that point? Were there many more Jews, or other persecuted groups, still living in German occupied areas?
Might have been able to go up from the Italian landings, but no, eventually you have to push them back through France and over the Rhine. Otherwise the Russians will push them from the east and no one wants that...
And, once again, D Day didn’t have anything at all to do with stopping the Holocaust. ;D
I don’t think by ‘44 you can separate the two. Defeating the Nazis will end the Holocaust, it might not be why you’re there in the first place (although certainly the allies were aware of the death camps by 1942) but that will the end result
Were there many more Jews, or other persecuted groups, still living in German occupied areas?
yes, thousands in occupied France Denmark, Greece, the Balkans and Italy
Saving the jews wasn't considred important at the time and before, during and after WW2 many countries (the UK, US, Canada) were very reluctant to take Jewish refugees. Anti-semitism was rife all over the world at the time (inc in the UK). The US & Canada refused refugee ships the right to land (MS St. Louis in 1939) and the UK was targetting Jewish refugee ships en route to Israel after WW2 to appease the arabs (we wanted oil).
We might have been on the winning side, but we certainly weren't 100% the good guys.